Maryland State Beekeepers Assoc

Maryland State Beekeepers Assoc, Inc. Dedicated to beekeeping in Maryland since 1908

318 Twelfth Street NE Washington, DC 20002 (202) 255-4318

January 14, 2011

Mark Powell Chief of Marketing Maryland Department of Agriculture Marketing and Agricultural Development 50 Harry S. Truman Parkway Annapolis, MD 21401

RE: COMAR 15.01.09 Advertising Agricultural Products as Local or Locally Grown

Dear Mr. Powell: The Maryland State Beekeepers Association, Inc. (MSBA) is concerned that the above-referenced proposed regulation may not accurately reflect both the nature of local honey production in Maryland and the impact these requirements may have upon the latter. We are hoping to both provide comment and to receive clarification concerning the relevance of this new regulation to honey production. Section .02 “Definitions” lists forms of processing that are not applicable to the extraction of honey, though Paragraph (b), “Those physical processes that do not fundamentally alter the raw product and/or only separate a whole, intact food into component parts” could be construed to apply. None of the examples given to illustrate this definition are parallel to honey production. Extracted honey is a raw, not a processed, food and not all honey is sold in an extracted form. Also, as you are doubtless aware, many Maryland beekeepers keep hives at several locations, both within the state and in nearby areas of Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. In the course of a single season, a Maryland hive may also be moved across the state and across state lines in order to provide critical pollination services to local farmers. Because of the small amount of honey produced in the course of each pollination term, honey from hives that have been placed in different apiaries is usually aggregated for extraction and bottling at a single location. Until the present, most Maryland beekeepers have identified their honey as local when it is produced by a registered Maryland beekeeper from hives in Maryland maintained by the that beekeeper, rather than tying the product to a each specific pollination location where the honeybees have been placed during the year. Consumer feedback on this approach has been positive and consistent throughout. Honey which is offered for sale must already meet Federal labeling standards (http://www.honey.com/nhb/industry/labeling-information/_) The name and the address of the manufacturer, packer or distributor of the honey are required to appear on the label of each package, meeting the expressed goal of the Maryland Department of Agriculture to provide consumers with adequate information to determine whether the product meets their standard for “local” origin. As a result, Maryland beekeepers – all of which are “sideline” or small, part time operations – have already invested in labels which may be potentially invalidated by the proposed legislation, even while serving its core mission. The Maryland State Beekeepers Association, Inc., would propose that existing labeling standards for honey already address MDA concerns for providing adequate information to the consumer, and honey should be specifically exempted from additional advertising or labeling requirements should the regulation as currently written be deemed to apply to honey and hive products. The requirement to provide additional information would create a hardship for small producers across the state while failing to offer significant new information to the consumer. Should these regulations be required for Maryland beekeepers, the only viable course for producers would not be to require hive location as the critical information for the consumer (even on the state level) but to identify as “local” honey from hives maintained by a registered Maryland beekeeper. Consumers would be guaranteed an agricultural product derived from an area ordinarily traversable by a small or sideline operator, and would not be faced with extensive and potentially confusing information. Sincerely,

Toni Burnham, First Vice President Maryland State Beekeepers Association, Inc.